Is there any way a user can view or copy non-editable GUI controls' contents at runtime?

Question

Here are two examples of what I mean:

• I am sure you all too have experienced this frustration before. A dialog box opens that displays only part of a long string (e.g. a file path), but won't allow you to select the text so you can read the full string. Neither text container will resize upon window resizing. (By the way, you can force windows —specially dialog boxes— to resize with tools such as Sizer, but helps little in this case, since controls are fixed-width.) The text is hidden, period.
• Copying a very long drop-down list control contents to a text file.

Do you know any way to solve these problems?

Answer 1

1. I have generally had success with Snagit's Text Capture feature that supports:

   Window          Region              Scrolling Window
   Active Window   Fixed Region        Scrolling Active Window
   Full Screen     Object              Clipboard Rich
   All-in-One      Custom Scroll       Text Formatting
   

2. There's also HyperSnap's similar TextSnap feature which I have used successfully.

3. AutoIt's Window Information Tool AU3Info may very well be able to help:

   

4. There's also CopyText but I've never tried it:

   

Answer 2

There is Property Edit, but I'm not sure if it will help in this particular example; it actually looks like the string is trimmed before displaying.

Answer 3

There's a new app called Textify, which does exactly that.

Have you ever wanted to copy some text from a dialog box which doesn’t provide such functionality?

Textify was created to solve this problem: you can point your mouse over the text, click on the mouse shortcut (Shift + Middle click by default), and get a selectable view of the text.

Answer 4

I found very useful the freeware WinSpy++ (updated). It allows to resize any control. Just do the following:

1. Drag the Finder Tool (crosshairs icon) over the control to be resized.
2. In the General tab, to the right of "Rectangle" details, click "Adjust window position" button (labelled with an ellipsis).
3. Set the "W" and "H" values to desired width and height (in pixels). You can reset the control's original size and position with "Reset" button.